Philosophy Unit 3&4;

Technology is neutral addition to our lives, as it can be used for enhancing OR for undermining purposes towards living a good life, and also can be perceived both ways.

For example, the introduction of mobile phones meant that we were able to conveniently call somebody to ask for a desperate favour instead of travelling all the way to their location. This would be an enhancing purpose.

However, the undermining perspective of this would be that phones would also give us the inclination toward falling into convenient and lazy behaviour patterns such as calling someone that lives just down the street for a fairly trivial purpose. An alternative to this situation would be to walk down the street and visit them, because some might argue that to maintain direct social contact in our personal relationships is more necessary for the good life than calling them over the phone. If one was to fall into the lazy behaviour pattern, they may eventually become unfulfilled because of their lack of direct social contact, which may mean they are then living a "bad life".

The introduction of technology in our lives is neither a definite enhancement or a definite undermining of our ability to live a good life, as there are both enhancing and undermining purposes for the same piece of technology. This means that the living of the good life lies in the choice of the one using the technology. - Johnny